Cigar Aficionado

Wayne Gretzky changed the game of hockey forever. He put on skates for the first time at the age of two, skating on a frozen river on his grandmother’s farm in Canada and was taught the game of hockey by his father, Walter, who built a rink in the family’s back yard. He made his first team at age five and at the age of 10 he scored so many goals he earned the nickname “The Great One.” As a pro, he led the Edmonton Oilers to four Stanley Cups and shattered record after record: most goals in a season (both first and second place), most assists, most points and many more. After 20 seasons in the NHL, a career that included stints with the New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and L.A. Kings, the Great Gretzky retired from the game. Today, the 64-year-old talks hockey on television for TNT and has a host of business ventures. In February, Gretzky sat down with Cigar Aficionado executive editor David Savona at Churchill Cigar Co. in Palm Beach, Florida, for a conversation about his life, his career and his longstanding love of cigars.

Savona: How would you feel after playing a game of hockey?

Gretzky: The biggest fallacy of my career was people said I never got hit. So not true. There were nights where, especially as I got older, I was really sore and the next morning was really hard. It was a different time, too. We practiced every day but Christmas Day. I my first training camp [when I was] 18 years old. They used to say if you drank water during practice you were out of shape. No water. They might bring a few water bottles, but everybody was afraid to touch them. There were no Power Bars when I played, we didn’t have Gatorade. If you were really tired and needed a little energy you would eat a Mars bar or an Oh Henry! bar.

Savona: I read that you ate steak before games.

Gretzky: Steak and a potato, corn, salad and chicken noodle soup was pretty much my routine for my whole career. It started in the mid ’80s that people started eating chicken, pasta and fish, but I never changed . . . I was just used to it, and you get superstitious too. Once I had my pregame meal at 12, 12:15, I could sleep from 12:30 to almost two o’clock. I liked getting to the rink early, 2:30, three o’clock. I was comfortable there, just sit and talk to the trainers, have a cup of coffee. And the older I got the more time I’d spend around the locker room. As you get older, you get to practice earlier, you get to games earlier, you realize you’re getting near the end and it’s not going to last forever.

Savona: Take me back to growing up in Brantford, Ontario. I heard you learned to skate when you were two years old. What are your earliest memories of playing hockey?

Gretzky: My grandmother had a river that went through the back of her farm and it would freeze. That’s where I first started skating. My dad would take me to these parks and I would skate. Because I was so young—three or four years old—he would be right there. It was my life. That’s what I enjoyed doing. He came up with the concept and put a rink in the back yard, so he could stay in the kitchen and watch. I was five when I made the 10-year-old team. I like yesterday, the coach came to the house and told us I made the team. He asked for my birth certificate, and the coach started laughing. He said, ‘You’re kidding right? He’s only five years old! He can’t play in this league.’ So, I didn’t play that year. The next year I went back out and I made the team. I played there for five years.

Savona: How big were those 10-year-olds?

Gretzky: Real big. And there was hitting back then. When I grew up, 10-year-olds were hitting. When I started, the goaltenders didn’t wear masks. I got one goal and I fell in love with it. Savona: Did you play other sports, too? Gretzky: I enjoyed baseball. I had as big a ion for that as I did for ice hockey. I tell parents all the time, ‘You don’t have to skate all summer.’ I’m a big believer you do it from September through April, and then the offseason, track and field, soccer, baseball, lacrosse—I always felt like those sports helped my hockey career. I played a lot of box [indoor] lacrosse, lot of track and field. I used to run long distance, and it really helped my cardiovascular for ice hockey. My mom was a great mother and she worried sick about me. I wore braces at eight and nine; I got them taken off and a week later a kid accidentally knocked out my teeth [with his stick]. Ironically, I didn’t lose a tooth in professional hockey. Not one. And I never wore a mouth guard.

Savona: You didn’t wear a mouth guard when you played?

Gretzky: I said what does it matter? My teeth are all fake anyway, so I wasn’t worried about losing my teeth.

Savona: Did you wear a helmet in those early days?

Gretzky: When I was a kid I wore a helmet. When I ed the WHA [World Hockey Association, at age 17] a guy on the team said, ‘Wayne, take your helmet off.’ My dad drove down to watch the game and I’m out there, first period with no helmet on. My dad came down to the bench and he was banging on the glass. He said, ‘When you get back to that locker room you put your helmet on.’ I said to the guys, ‘My dad says I gotta put my helmet on.’ (Laughs.) When the young guys would come into [the NHL] in the mid ’80s, that’s when visors started to become more prevalent in minor hockey. I could never get comfortable with it. When young guys would come in the first day they would take their visors off. I’d say, ‘What are you doing?’ You’re not more of a man playing with your visor off. You played your whole life with a visor.  I said, ‘Keep your visor on.’ It was the complete opposite of what I was told in 1978.

Savona: So, what’s the secret? How did Wayne Gretzky become the greatest guy who’s ever played hockey?

Gretzky: I don’t know but I will tell you this. I got very lucky. My timing couldn’t have been better. When I came into the league it was just changing from that big, physical fighting Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins, to more of a skating game. So, the game was sort of changing to more of a finesse game, more of a skill game, more of a speed game. And Edmonton turned out to be a great place for me to live and the organization was really good and we had five or six Hall of Famers on that team, there could have been more even. The coach let me be Wayne Gretzky, he let me be the finesse player that I was and yet he was hard on me and hard on all the players. He treated us like men and yet he let us be ourselves. Timing was everything for me. I moved away from home at 14 to play with 14-year-olds, which was really difficult. I was 120 pounds, five-foot-six. So, I played there, I had the right coach, and then two years later I went into the draft and I got picked third in the draft. At 16, I got invited to the World Junior team. I would never have made the team, [but] the two best players got injured and couldn’t play. The coach actually said, ‘I don’t want you on my team, but I gotta keep you.’ I was 16; these kids were all 20-year-olds.

Savona: Is it true that when you were young you would watch hockey on TV with a pen and paper and sketch out the game?

Gretzky: Oh yeah.

Savona: Tell me about that.

Gretzky: My dad was always kind of ahead of his time. When I was in the backyard, he used to throw out tennis balls. My dad would say if you can learn how to handle a tennis ball on the ice—cause it bounces so much—a puck is going to be very easy. So, I always was doing drills with tennis balls. And then he said to me, ‘If you want to improve your peripheral vision, sit here, watch the hockey game, and without looking down follow the puck. And stay within the lines and the confines.’ He said, ‘You’re going to learn your peripheral vision and you’ll see which team has more control of that game.’ I did it for almost every game, probably from the time I was five years old, till I was 11. He was pretty innovative, my dad. People said ‘your dad pushed you’—he never pushed me, ever. Both my mom and dad were great parents, they were very ive. We didn’t have a lot of money. My grandmother used to help pay for my sticks and my skates. The only two rules [my dad] had was A) If you’re going to play, you’re going to play the best you can play, and B) You can’t quit. You can pack it in at the end of the year, but once you start, you’re in. Very ive.

Savona: What did he do?

Gretzky: He worked for Bell Telephone, he fixed Teletype machines. The most my dad ever made was probably $35,000 a year but he never wanted for money. He always told a funny story. The age of 10 was the year I got 400 goals. So, there was a lot of publicity going around. He went to fix a machine 25 minutes out of Brantford. The secretary walked him in and she’s making conversation and she has no idea who my dad was. She said, ‘Where are you from?’ My dad said, ‘Oh, I’m from Brantford.’ She said, ‘Have you seen that Gretzky kid play hockey?’ And he said, ‘Yeah I’ve seen him play a little bit.’ And she said, ‘Oh, I think he’s so overrated,’ and she went into this whole thing—nothing really bad. Finally, the boss came in and said, ‘Hey Mr. Gretzky, how are you doing?’ (Laughs.) She just said, ‘Oh no.’ That was my dad’s favorite story.

Savona: Isn’t that about the time when they started calling you The Great One?

Gretzky: I got that [name] when I was 10 years old. This guy John Herbert drove down from a newspaper called The London Free Press. He wrote this big story, and at the end he said, ‘In hockey, the best players get nicknames. Gordie Howe is Mr. Hockey. Bobby Hull is the Golden Jet. He should be called The Great One.’ My dad tried to kill that name from day one. It just stuck.

Savona: He thought it was too much?

Gretzky: He didn’t like it at all. We were playing in this tournament [at age 10]. I played five games in 24 hours. It was about an-hour-and-20-minute drive from my home. Saturday night my dad said, ‘Do you want to sleep in in the morning and not play?’ I said, ‘Yeah, maybe I need a rest.’ Quarter of seven [the next day] I woke my dad up and said I want to go play. So, we get in the car, we get there at the end of the second period and we were losing 3-0. My dad had a pet peeve—he hated people walking on cement with their skates. In those days there weren’t a lot of skate guards around, so he carried me into the arena [to protect the skates]. I can it like it was yesterday. These ladies were standing there and they said, ‘Look, they even carry him into the games.’ (Laughs.) I scored four goals in the third period and we won 4-3.

Savona: When did you know that you wanted to be a professional hockey player?

Gretzky: I think we all dream about it, right? Reality set in for me at 16, the year I made that junior team. I was playing with and against the best players in the world. Fourteen of the players on our team that year made the NHL and were good players. And I had a really good tournament, and I thinking, gosh, I’m playing with the best players in the world and they’re 19 and 20. And then, partway through that tournament, there was a gentleman by the name of John Bassett that I had known, he owned the Birmingham Bulls of the WHA, and I knew him very well. He called my room in Montreal, and said I’d love to have coffee with you tomorrow. I thinking, gosh I got no money on me, how am I going to pay for this coffee? I was so nervous. He said, ‘I’d like you to turn pro and go to Birmingham.’ At 16. He offered me $100,000 for the rest of the year and $150,000 for the next year. I was making $24 a week in Sault Ste. Marie. My parents really couldn’t afford long-distance phone calls. I’m thinking: gosh, OK, I gotta call my dad. My dad said, ‘You’re going back to grade 11.’ I came back, I said, ‘Mr. Bassett, my dad won’t let me play.’

Savona: That must have been hard to say.

Gretzky: My dad was right. But that was killing me. I could have went pro and was thinking wow, this is pretty cool.

Savona: Good for your dad.

Gretzky: He did that twice to me. A year later, the Toronto Blue Jays [of Major League Baseball] offered me a contract. Because, in those days, Canada wasn’t part of the draft. I was 17. I said I’d love to go. Same thing. I called my dad, my dad said, ‘No, you’re going back to school.’ So, my baseball career was over.

Savona: But that worked out OK.

Gretzky: Yeah. Listen, I loved the game. I’m not sure I would have got higher than Double A, but I really did love baseball. I was a pitcher, shortstop.

Savona: You become a pro hockey player of course, you get into the World Hockey Association in 1978 and that quickly turns to you going to the Edmonton Oilers, which gets you into the NHL. That team turned out to be fantastic, you made it fantastic. Tell me how it felt to win that first Stanley Cup in 1984, not only the first for you but the first for the Oilers.

Gretzky: First of all, it’s almost impossible to put into words. It really is so overwhelming. I was on a flight, Montreal to Toronto, and I happened to be sitting next to Bryan Trottier in 1981 [before Gretzky had won a championship]. I was asking him: what does it feel like winning the Stanley Cup? His eyes got so emotional. He said, ‘It’s so incredible. I wish every player in the league could experience that feeling one time.’ Then he stopped and he said, ‘But that’s what makes it great—they’re not gonna. There’s only so many guys who get to do it. And that’s what makes it so special.’ And the first time you lift it, the first thing you think of is the players that are around you. The guys that you battled with for days and months and years. And then you start thinking about your grandparents, the sacrifices your parents made, the coaches you had. It’s so overwhelming, it’s overpowering. And listen, I love every sport and I got a lot of respect for people who play, but the one thing I always say for our sport, for a team sport we have the greatest trophy ever made. Even if you don’t know hockey you know what the Stanley Cup is. It really is so special. It’s like a magnet. People want to touch it.

Savona: I watched that moment—the whole team was holding the Cup, and the fans even came on the ice.

Gretzky: The first time it was just pandemonium. The third time we couldn’t even move. You can’t get mad at the fans, they’re so excited. So, the last Cup I was on, we were up 3-0 with a tie, so we knew we were in a pretty comfortable position to sweep the series. So, as I walked into the arena I asked the security guys and the police, ‘Hey, can you keep the ice for just the guys?’ And they said absolutely. It was so special. It was just the players, and the trainers and coaches and the owner. We were really able to enjoy it as a group. It was really powerful, for all of us. We took it to our favorite restaurants, places we hung out, took it to hospitals. By the time we won the third time, we were kind of tired, and we hid the Cup in one of my teammates’ car trunk.

Savona: Would you drink out of it?

Gretzky: Oh yeah, that was a big thing. Champagne, that was always big.

Savona: So, you win four Cups with Edmonton. Then you get traded to the L.A. Kings in 1988. I watched your press conference. That must have been like a thunderclap.

Gretzky: It didn’t blindside me. For the public, it was a little bit of a blindside. We had just won our fourth Cup in five years. I had a year to go on my contract, and at the end of the year I would have been an unrestricted free agent. They wanted me to sign a new contract. I said to the owner, ‘You know what? Right now, I’m sort of a salary cap to the rest of the players on our team and I can’t do that to my teammates, and the league, but I’ll put it in writing that whatever I get offered as a free agent you have the right to match.’ And he said, ‘No, I can’t go down that road, that’s not smart business.’ And I said, ‘OK, I can’t sign.’ He said, ‘Give me a list of teams,’ and I gave him New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and L.A. My wife and I were set to go to Detroit. That’s where I thought I was going. It was my dad who said: ‘There’s only one Gordie Howe, and he played in Detroit. Do something different and go to L.A.’ So I did. It was tough, it was difficult. I went from the best team in hockey to a team that finished 20 out of 21 the year before, I went from 18,500 people every single game, from beginning to end, to I think my first exhibition game we had 8,000 people. But I got lucky—it was an incredible group of guys. My first year in L.A., the closest game was three and a half hours by plane to St. Louis and the second closest was Vancouver, three hours and 40 minutes. And now, you’ve got Vegas, Colorado, San Jose, L.A., Anaheim—the game is just growing. Was I part of it? Yeah, but I hit the perfect storm.

Savona: Do you think ultimately it was good for the game that you left Edmonton and moved to other places?

Gretzky: From my point of view, did I miss Edmonton? 100 percent. I loved every minute of it up there. When I played in New York and L.A. I loved it, but when I played in Edmonton it was a different crowd, ’cause it was less corporate. I could seeing the same four or five people in the same seats for 30, 40 games. I knew when they were in Hawaii at Christmastime ’cause somebody else would be in their seats. It was more of a family scenario. Whereas in the big cities it’s a little more corporate.

Savona: I read somewhere that you would look out while you were playing, and you could tell if a family member wasn’t in their seat.

Gretzky: Yeah, I could tell when my wife would sit down in the game. ‘Hey, why did you get there when there was seven minutes left in the first quarter?’ There’s other teammates I played with who had no idea what was going on [in the stands]. I don’t know. Maybe it made me comfortable on the bench that I knew what was going on in the arena too.

Savona: And I heard that you your plays in hockey.

Gretzky: I don’t know why. I can’t a lot of things, but I do about hockey.

Savona: Do you still throw the skates on?

Gretzky: I used to play one or two charity games a year and host a fantasy camp, and I’d skate with every team. I went to a charity event and I came back to the hotel, I threw my bag on the floor and I looked at Janet [his wife] and said, ‘I’m done. It’s the last time I’m ever skating.’

Savona: How long ago was this?

Gretzky: I guess six years ago. I said the greatest thing about our game is you can’t be nervous or scared. This was the first time I was nervous that I was going to fall, and you can’t do that in hockey. I don’t play anymore. Some ways I’m happy, some ways I’m sad.

Savona: Let’s talk about cigars. When you were first on the cover in 1997, you were a cigar smoker, especially smaller cigars. Are you more into cigars now?

Gretzky: It’s different now. When I played [hockey], during the season I never golfed. Now, there’s a little bit more time to golf and there’s times when I’ll go weeks without playing or play for six straight days. I love having a cigar on the golf course. I always tell people to each his own. To me, I’m comfortable having a cigar on the golf course and I love it.

Savona: How often do you light up?

Gretzky: When I play golf? A couple a day.

Savona: Do you have any friends who are cigar smokers?

Gretzky: Most of them are. My buddy Kid Rock, he got me smoking smaller cigars. Barkley likes to have a cigar. M.J. [Michael Jordan] likes cigars. To me, M.J. is the greatest athlete who ever lived. People ask me all the time who’s the greatest athlete. I say, it’s not even close. The only guy that I put close to him is Muhammad Ali. And that’s the great thing about sports, right? Nobody has the right answer, everyone can sit around and give their opinion.

Savona: Mark Messier says it’s you.

Gretzky: (Laughs.) It’s not me. He’s too kind. I tell people this all the time, they say, did you get nervous in big games? Nervous isn’t the right word. It’s this energy, all of a sudden at 2:30 for a seven o’clock game my armpits would start sweating. It wasn’t like I was nervous. When I was younger, I used to love watching Borg and McEnroe, because it seemed like both of them went to another level. I used to love [Kansas City Royal] George Brett when they got to the playoffs. If he didn’t hit a home run, it was going to be close. And I used to sit in amazement watching Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the finals. Just hitting shots, making plays. I always sat there and said it’s so unique to see those guys go to another level, the bigger the game is. And that’s what guys like Mark Messier did, guys like Mario Lemieux did.

Savona: What differentiates good players from great players?

Gretzky: Winning is a big thing. Let me tell you, there’s a difference between winning and not winning (chuckles). But if you’re winning, you’re helping make players around you better, and they’re helping you be better also. Winning, that’s what we get paid to do. We’re here to entertain, don’t get me wrong, but ultimately you want to lift that trophy in the end.

Savona: Let’s talk records—you have a record for holding records in hockey, and I believe right now you have 57 official NHL records. Which of these are you most proud of, and which do you think will be the hardest for someone to break?

Gretzky: I think the one I’m most proud of is 50 goals in 39 games. For somebody to get 50 goals in 38 games will be really difficult. For a four-game stretch there I think I went five, four, three and one. That would be my favorite and the one I think is hardest to break. I was really proud the year I averaged two assists a game, 163 assists. I thinking that would be a tough one to break. Now listen, all records are made to be broken.

Savona: Alex Ovechkin is close to catching one of your records, career goals. How do you feel about it?

Gretzky: I one night we were having dinner, my dad and I and Gordie. [Gordie Howe, who played in the NHL in 26 seasons, all but one for the Detroit Red Wings, held many NHL records including career goals before Gretzky broke them.] Gordie went up to bed. My dad and I were sitting for a few minutes, and I said, ‘You know, in some ways I’m sad and embarrassed I’m breaking Gordie’s record.’ My dad said, ‘You shouldn’t be. You should be as happy and as proud of the guy who breaks your record as Gordie is of you breaking his record.’ I just looked at him and said, ‘Can I enjoy it a little bit?’ (Laughs heartily.) And so I always that. Alex has been not only great for [the Washington Capitals] he’s been great for the NHL, great for Russian kids playing hockey, he’s won a Stanley Cup, he’s just been a true superstar for our league. I’m happy for Alex ’cause he’s a good guy. I don’t know a lot of bad guys in hockey.

Savona: Why is that?

Gretzky: You go into the locker room, it’s check your ego at the door. You’re playing for the crest on the front of your jersey, not the name on the back. And it’s just a mentality that started with guys like Jean Béliveau, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr and then Messier, Lemieux, [Sidney] Crosby and Ovechkin. It just es down.

Savona: How do you feel about the state of the game today?

Gretzky: I feel like the game is better than it’s ever been. The players themselves, the athleticism they have today is over the top, the speed and size. And the equipment is so much better today. And not just the skates and the sticks and the gloves, but the ice. There were times when we could hardly skate in Madison Square Garden in the 1980s because the ice was so bad. The game is more skilled and faster now, they move quicker, they shoot the puck harder. And the coaching is so much more advanced than it was 40 years ago.

Savona: You’re on TNT now, talking hockey on TV.

Gretzky: I love it, for a few reasons. It keeps me involved in hockey. I don’t have to stress about winning and losing. I love that part of it. And the group of guys I’m working with are just really, really good guys. I couldn’t be more proud of being involved with them. I told our guys the first week I was there, it was kind of new to me, and I said listen, what we need to establish here is we need to be positive. So, we’re always trying to be as positive as we can. You don’t make it personal.

Savona: You have a bunch of business ventures.

Gretzky: I had a restaurant for 27 years, and when Covid hit, it was the perfect time to shut it down. We had a great run. I started my winery [Wayne Gretzky Estates] years ago with a partner named John Peller who has been in the wine business forever. I always tell people John Peller didn’t tell me how to play hockey and I don’t tell him how to make wine. It’s turned out to be bigger and better than I anticipated. There’s a hockey rink in the wintertime for people to go skate. I have friends who go up there and say why don’t you sell this in the United States? We’re proud of what we’re doing in Canada and that’s probably where we’re going to stay.

Savona: You were in the news when President Trump talked about having you get involved in Canadian politics—any plans?

Gretzky: Everybody who knows me knows I have no interest in politics. And over the years I have been so fortunate. I have met all the prime ministers back to Pierre Trudeau in 1980. Janet and I were fortunate enough to meet President Reagan. Yeah, I have a lot of friends who were either prime ministers or presidents and those guys are way smarter than I am. I’m a hockey guy, and that’s my love and ion. I just hope for everyone’s sake, everyone gets along. 

Portraits by Jeffery Salter • Styling: lucrezia Mancini • Grooming: Maggie Strunk • Photographed at Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL